6 Expert Tips to Improve Your Self-Storage Website

Be sure to supplement the words with images or videos that are attractive and not amateurish. If you’re not good at taking photos, hire a pro to shoot them for you; same goes for the videos.

In the case of a storage facility, the images on your site should include shots of the units, the exterior and the employees. If you need images aside from the ones related to your facility, check out low-cost stock photos from sites like iStock and Shutterstock.

4. Make It Mobile

While you may not own a smartphone or tablet computer, many of your potential customers do. That’s why your website design should be what’s known as “responsive”—able to be viewed clearly on any number of devices.

“Simply put, users abandon sites that aren’t optimized for the device they are using. If you are trying to cram a full website onto someone’s smartphone, they leave because the experience is frustrating,” according to Duda, a company that offers a WordPress plug-in for mobile sites. “Small business owners need a website that works across desktop, tablet and mobile devices.”

5. Create a Call to Action

Simply put, you need to tell visitors to your website what you want them to do. Do you want them to call your facility? If so, then make sure your site is equipped with a giant “Call Us Now” button. Do you want them to visit your facility? If so, your website should feature a “Visit Us Now” button linking to the hours for and directions to your facility.

“Once you know what you want the visitor to do, it’s easy to make your website 100 percent aimed at accomplishing that goal,” small-business consultant Brian Lofrumento said. “Chances are, right now it’s not, as 90 percent of small-business owners never ask themselves what they want website visitors to do.”

6. Post Robust Content

Marketing consultant Shanna Kurpe said she thinks the biggest problem plaguing business websites is “terrible” content. Experts recommend that your website’s content inform and educate customers, and that it not be overly sales-oriented.

Online consultant James Blews, owner of Smart Idea Lane, said that if your site doesn’t answer a customer’s questions or address a customer’s concerns, it’s worthless. You can create valuable content through regular blog posts, or “evergreen” articles providing tips and advice. Information, he said, “is the new kingdom in the land we call the Internet.”

Kurpe’s boldest suggestion concerning content: Tone down mentions of your company. “I know that sounds crazy, but repositioning content to talk more about the actual customer and their problems, rather than the company, can make a huge impact on conversion,” Kurpe said.

John Egan is the editor-in-chief at SpareFoot, an online marketplace for self-storage consumers. Before joining SpareFoot, he was the editor-in-chief at Bankrate Insurance. “The Storage Facilitator” is a self-storage blog managed by SpareFoot and hosted by partner SelfStorage.com.